Research Shows You Can Improve Your Health by Adding These Three Things to Your Whey Protein

2 Feb

Surveys have shown that the vast majority of athletes take protein supplements, and more and more “regular” people (non-athletes) are taking them as well. But are they good for you, and should you be taking them?

Some experts claim protein supplements are important for both athletes and regular Joes, while others say they are a complete waste of money.

The purpose of this article is not to give you the complete answer as to whether or not you should take protein supplements; however, here is some great new information that can help you make an informed decision…

Dr. Algidas Liutkevicius and his colleagues recently tested two versions of a whey-based drink that included both vitamin D and prebiotic dietary fiber. One drink included calcium phosphate and the other version included calcium lactate.

Because it’s important for a “function beverage” to taste good, they tested the drinks on trained tasters to find out which drink they preferred based purely on taste.

The version of the drink that included calcium lactate won the taste test and was then tested on thirty subjects against a control drink to see how it affected their overall health.

Results

According to Dr. Liutkevicius, “After 21 days of drinking the beverage, the volunteers’ blood analysis showed a significant decrease in LDL-cholesterol (P < 0.01) and triglyceride (P < 0.01) concentrations—changes which would be likely to have a beneficial impact on their lives.”

It seems as though adding calcium, vitamin D, and prebiotic dietary fiber to a beverage containing whey protein may have huge health benefits for those who drink it. At least according to this study, whey protein with the addition of the compounds listed above is not a complete waste of money. But here is something to think about…

Vitamin D3 supplementation alone has been shown to have many health benefits. In fact, many experts state that most Westerners are vitamin D deficient and supplementation could help improve a large assortment of health problems.

According to an article by Dr. Chris D. Meletic, “The latest research, however, shows that 1,25-dihyroxy Vitamin D3 deficiency is linked to a surprising number of other health conditions such as depression, back pain, cancer, both insulin resistance and pre-eclampsia during pregnancy, impaired immunity and macular degeneration.

“As it becomes clear that Vitamin D3 plays a wide role in overall health, it’s becoming equally clear that a large percentage of individuals are deficient in this important nutrient, which has hormone-like activity. The fear of skin cancer has stopped many individuals from obtaining beneficial amounts of sunlight.”

Additionally, studies have shown vitamin D levels have an inverse relationship with LDL (the bad cholesterol) levels.

So the question here is, was it the combination of whey and the other additives like vitamin D that caused the great results or would supplementing with vitamin D3 alone have had the same benefits? We don’t know the answer but either way, it’s clear most Americans don’t get enough vitamin D and improving your vitamin D levels will probably also improve your health.

Is a Vegetarian Diet Worse for the Environment?

Here is a recent headline: “Vegetarian and ‘healthy’ diets could be more harmful to the environment. Researchers say eating lettuce is ‘over three times worse’ in greenhouse gas emissions than eating bacon.”

Sounds contradictory to everything you may have heard up to this point about diets and their effect on the environment, doesn’t it?

It gets more interesting… According to Science Daily: “Following the USDA recommendations to consume more fruits, vegetables, dairy, and seafood is more harmful to the environment because those foods have relatively high resource uses and greenhouse gas emissions per calorie, say researchers. A new study measured the changes in energy use, blue water footprint and GHG emissions associated with US food consumption patterns.”

Dr. Paul Fischbeck, a Professor of Social and Decisions Sciences and Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University writes, “Eating lettuce is over three times worse in greenhouse gas emissions than eating bacon… Lots of common vegetables require more resources per calorie than you would think. Eggplant, celery, and cucumbers look particularly bad when compared to pork or chicken.”

Michelle Tom, a Ph.D. candidate at Carnegie Mellon University adds, “There’s a complex relationship between diet and the environment… What is good for us health-wise isn’t always what’s best for the environment. That’s important for public officials to know and for them to be cognizant of these tradeoffs as they develop or continue to develop dietary guidelines in the future.”

The researchers further clarified their point in an interview for the Huffington Post: “You can’t lump all vegetables together and say they’re good… You can’t lump all meat together and say it’s bad.”

The article went on to read, “The researchers didn’t find that vegetarianism is bad for the environment. They found that not every plant product is more environmentally friendly than every meat product.”

Don’t forget, if you ever have any questions or concerns about your health, talk to us. Contact us with your questions. We’re here to help and don’t enjoy anything more than participating in providing you natural pain relief

Did You Make a New Year’s Resolution? It’s Not Too Late…

1 Feb

If you want to achieve more success and happiness in 2016, this will be important information for you. It has to do with New Year’s Resolutions, and even more important, something you should do RIGHT NOW.

Let’s take a look at some statistics courtesy of StatisticBrain.com…

Here were the top 10 New Year’s Resolutions for 2015:

  1. Lose Weight
  2. Getting Organized
  3. Spend Less, Save More
  4. Enjoy Life To The Fullest
  5. Staying Fit And Healthy
  6. Learn Something New
  7. Quit Smoking
  8. Help Others With Dreams
  9. Fall In Love
  10. Spend More Time With Family

Here are the lengths of resolution success rates:

Resolutions maintained through:

One Week: 75%

Two Weeks: 71%

One Month: 64%

Six Months: 46%

I don’t know about you, but those statistics seem pretty good to me. Here is something extremely important: People who explicitly make resolutions are ten times more likely to attain their goals than people who don’t explicitly make resolutions.

In other words, you are much more likely to be successful and create the life you want and deserve if you set goals. Better yet, write them down and make them known.

You don’t have to just make a New Year’s Resolution on January 1st! You can make one any time of the year whenever you want.

The best thing to do is set an achievable goal and work at that one goal until it’s complete. Then, simply set another one. Take baby steps, and before you know it… your entire life will change.

Sincerely,

Dr. Binder

Is Exercise a “Cure-All?”

28 Jan

Some of you may have heard about how a modified form of boxing is helping patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). If you haven’t, it’s been observed that people with Parkinson’s disease (PD) who engage in this boxing-like exercise routine can enhance their quality of life and even build impressive gains in posture, strength, flexibility, and speed. Proponents of the program report that regardless the degree of severity of PD, participants have a happier, healthier, and higher quality of life.

But must it be boxing? Maybe not. A report presented at the International Congress of Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders in San Diego in June 2015 found that patients with Parkinson’s disease who began regular exercise early into the PD process had a much slower decline in their quality of life when compared with those who started exercising later. The researchers found just 2.5 hours per week of exercise is needed to improve quality of life scores. According to the report, it didn’t matter what exercise the participants did — simply getting up and moving for a total of 2.5 hours/week was reportedly enough (that’s only 20-25 minutes / day)!

Looking beyond Parkinson’s, other chronic conditions also benefit from adding exercise into a person’s lifestyle. Studies show that regular exercise as simple as walking helps reduce one’s risk for memory loss, and it slows down functional decline in the elderly. Incorporating aerobic exercise into one’s lifestyle can also improve reaction time in people at ALL AGES. Exercise has also been shown to improve both physical and emotional well-being in those afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease with as little as 60 minutes/week of moderate exercise! Patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) have also reported less stiffness and less muscle wasting when using exercise machines, aquatic exercise, and/or walking.

Research has shown just 30 minutes of brisk exercise three times a week can help reduce depressive symptoms in patients with mild-to-moderate depression. In a study involving teenagers, those who engaged in sports reported a greater level of well-being than their sedentary peers, and the more vigorous the exercise, the better their emotion health! In kids 8-12 years old, physical inactivity is strongly linked to depression. Even anxiety, stress, and depression associated with menopause are less severe in those who exercise! So LET’S ALL GET OUT THERE AND EXERCISE!!!

We realize you have a choice in whom you consider for your health care provision and we sincerely appreciate your trust in choosing our service for those needs. If you, a friend, or family member requires care, we would be honored to render our services.

 YOU MAY BE A CANDIDATE FOR CHIROPRACTIC CARE! FOR A FREE NO-OBLIGATION CONSULTATION CALL 717-697-1888

Whiplash – What Exercises Should I Do? (Part 1)

26 Jan

Whiplash, or “Whiplash Associated Disorders” (WAD), results from a sudden jarring motion, often from a car crash that occurs too fast for someone to voluntarily “brace” themselves. This is because the whole “whiplash cycle” is over within 300msec, and we cannot contract a muscle faster than 700-800 msec. Other injury factors include: the type and angle of the crash, the size of the involved vehicles, the speed, the absorption of the crash by crushing metal (or lack thereof), the size of the person (and gender), angle of the seat back and it’s “stiffness,” the position of the head rest, and the slipperiness of the road. ALL these factors (and more) help determine whether an injury occurs as well as the degree of injury!

There is so much published about neck pain resulting from whiplash that it’s confusing (to say the least) about which exercises are best for the whiplash patient. Rather, each patient needs to be assessed and managed based on their unique situation.

In regards to neck pain, an exercise program must have three goals: Stretching, Strengthening, and Stabilizing. All three goals work towards a common purpose: To restore function. Initially, when pain factors are high, patients perform active movement within reasonable pain boundaries to improve their cervical range of motion. Once movement is fairly well tolerated, it’s time to focus on strengthening exercises.

There are certain muscles that can “hide” behind larger, stronger muscles and are more difficult to isolate, and therefore, very often remain weak — even sometimes in spite of strengthening exercises. One VERY important muscle group is called the deep neck flexors, which “hide behind” the stronger, more superficial neck flexing muscle called the sternocleidomastoid (SCM). To “trick” the SCM into NOT contracting (so we can engage and exercise the deep neck flexors), we drop the chin to the chest without flexing the head forwards (like the downward motion when nodding “yes”). Try it! You should feel “the pull” or a stretch in the muscles in the back of your neck. This is referred to as “craniocervical flexion” but we’ll call it a “chin tuck.”

PROCEDURE 1: Perform the above “chin tuck” by lying on your back, chin tuck, and press your neck down into the bench or floor, hold for three-to-five seconds and then release the chin tuck SLOWLY (two times slower than the initial downward movement). If you can’t get your neck to flatten out, repeat this with a small rolled up towel placed behind the neck. Start with three-to-five repetitions and gradually increase the reps and sets. To make this more “portable” so you can do this during the day, see Procedure 2.

PROCEDURE 2: In a seated or standing position, place your finger tips behind your neck and push your neck into your fingers gradually increasing the pressure as you apply the “chin tuck.” Do this slowly, applying gradual pressure INTO your finger tips and then (MOST IMPORTANTLY), release the pressure SLOWLY (again, two times slower than the initial “push”). Repeat three-to-five times for one session and do multiple sessions during the day. SET THE TIMER on your cell phone for two or three hrs to REMIND you to do these multiple times a day!

Next month, we will address the deep neck extensors, as well as other deep muscles!

We realize you have a choice in whom you consider for your health care provision and we sincerely appreciate your trust in choosing our service for those needs. If you, a friend, or family member requires care for Whiplash, we would be honored to render our services.

YOU MAY BE A CANDIDATE FOR CHIROPRACTIC CARE FOR WHIPLASH! FOR A FREE NO-OBLIGATION CONSULTATION CALL 717-697-1888

Surgery for Neck and Arm Pain?

25 Jan

We in the healthcare management world are all biased. If a patient with neck and arm pain presents to chiropractic clinic, the doctor of chiropractic will usually recommend a non-surgical trial of care as long as “red flags” don’t exist (that is, “bad” things like bowel/bladder weakness, rapidly worsening symptoms, and a few others). Frequently, the patient asks, “…should I just have the surgery…am I just postponing the inevitable?” Here’s what we know…

In a 2015 study addressing this very question, the authors compared a non-surgical physical therapy approach using neck-specific general exercises, pain relief, coping strategies, and improving self-management strategies against surgical treatment (ACDF – anterior cervical decompression and fusion) with post-surgical physical therapy. Twelve months following the conclusion of treatment, they found 87% of the 31 patients in the surgical group reported a “better/much better” result compared with 62% of the 32 patients in the non-surgical group. However, at the two-year point, the satisfaction numbers were 81% (surgical) and 69% (non-surgical). The study’s “conclusion” states that a structured NON-SURGICAL treatment approach “…should be tried before surgery is chosen.”

More importantly, at the one year point, 62% of those treated WITHOUT surgery reported a “better/much better” result, which improved to 69% by year two while those receiving surgery DROPPED from 87% to 81% after two years. It would be interesting to see this split at three, four, and five-year time-points, as it is well known that degeneration occurs more rapidly above and below a fusion due to the increased biomechanical load. This can lead to the need for further treatment.

A very similar 2013 study followed 50 patients with herniated cervical disks and arm pain who received chiropractic treatment. After two weeks of care, 55.3% reported they were “better” or “much better.” After one month, 68.9% reported improvement and the percentage increased to 85.7% after three months.

The good news is that guidelines for treating neck pain that radiates into an arm recommend that patients undergo a course of “conservative” (non-surgical) care FIRST before progressing to surgical care. In fact, many guidelines DON’T even recommend MRI or EMG/NCV initially unless the result from the non-surgical care is not satisfactory, usually by the four-to-six week point into treatment.

These studies show that patients with neck and arm pain (most commonly caused by herniated disks) are frequently successfully managed WITHOUT SURGERY and hence, this approach should be tried FIRST and surgery be reserved ONLY to the non-responders.

We realize you have a choice in whom you consider for your health care provision and we sincerely appreciate your trust in choosing our service for those needs. If you, a friend, or family member requires care for neck pain or headaches, we would be honored to render our services.

YOU MAY BE A CANDIDATE FOR CHIROPRACTIC CARE FOR NECK PAIN!

FOR A FREE NO-OBLIGATION CONSULTATION CALL 717-697-1888

Fibromyalgia “Diet” – Is There Such a Thing?

21 Jan

Folks suffering with fibromyalgia (FM) commonly complain that certain foods can make their symptoms worse. How common is this? One study reported 42% of FM patients found that certain foods worsened their symptoms!

Because FM affects each person differently, there is no ONE FM diet or, “…one size fits all” when it comes to eating “right” for FM. Patients with FM usually find out by trial and error which foods work vs. those that consistently don’t. However, remembering which foods do what can be a challenge so FIRST, make a three column FOOD LOG with the following headings: BETTER, NO CHANGE, WORSE. This will allow you to QUICKLY review the list as a memory refresher.

According to Dr. Ginevra Liptan, medical director of the Frida Center for Fibromyalgia (Portland, OR) and author of Figuring Out Fibromyalgia: Current Science and the Most Effective Treatments, there are some common trends she’s observed through treating FM patients. Here are some of her recommendations:

PAY ATTENTION TO HOW FOOD MAKES YOU FEEL: It is quite common to have “sensitivities” to certain foods, but this is highly variable from person to person. Examples of problematic foods/ingredients include: MSG (commonly used in Chinese food), other preservatives, eggs, gluten, and dairy. Dr. Liptan HIGHLY recommends the food journal approach! She also recommends including a note about the type of symptoms noticed with each “WORSE” food, as symptoms can vary significantly.

ELIMINATE CERTAIN FOODS: If you suspect a certain food may be problematic, try an elimination challenge diet. That means STOP eating that food for six to eight weeks and then ADD it back into your diet and see how you feel. Remember, FM sufferers frequently have irritable bowel syndrome, also known as IBS, and this approach can be REALLY HELPFUL! Food allergies may be part of the problem, and your doctor may refer you for a consult with an allergist and/or a dietician. They will also discuss the “anti-inflammatory diet” with you.

EAT HEALTHY: In general, your diet should emphasize fruits and vegetables and lean protein. Pre-prepare food so you have something “healthy” to reach for rather than a less healthy snack when you’re hungry and tired. Consider “pre-washed” and pre-cut up vegetables; try quinoa rather than pasta. Consume anti-fatigue foods and eat multiple small meals daily vs. one to two large meals. Protein snacks (like a hardboiled egg or oatmeal – GLUTEN FREE) help a lot! Eat breakfast and include protein. Also, GET ENOUGH SLEEP (at least seven to eight hours and be consistent)!

SUPPLEMENTS: Consider a good general multi-vitamin, calcium and magnesium, omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D3, and Co-Enzyme Q10. There are others, but this represents a great place to start. Remember to check any medication you may be taking with these/any suggestions before taking supplements!

If you, a friend or family member requires care for Fibromyalgia, we sincerely appreciate the trust and confidence shown by choosing our services!

YOU MAY BE A CANDIDATE FOR CHIROPRACTIC CARE FOR FIBROMYALGIA! FOR A FREE NO-OBLIGATION CONSULTATION CALL 717-697-1888

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